Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers have become increasingly popular as personal navigational aids and as features integrated into consumer electronics, such as cellular telephones, wireless personal data assistants, and automobile navigation systems. GPS receivers are passive devices that provide geolocational data only, which must be combined with maps, charts, and other navigational aids to bring meaning to raw latitude and longitude coordinates. Integrating GPS receivers into consumer electronics or navigation systems has enabled users to retrieve helpful travel-related information and, in some configurations, to store additional information. However, such information generally remains personal to the user, unless shared or posted through some form of digital data communications, such as e-mail, text messaging, or Web sites.
Recently, Web logs or “blogs,” have begun to proliferate as a new form of Web-based digital data communication. Blogs are online forums for the sharing of the personal thoughts of the author, known as a “blogger,” as well as other types of digital information, such as images, sounds, video clips, and files. Blogs are journals or diaries generally publicly accessible that are often updated on a frequent basis, or whenever the blogger chooses. Blog readers are invited to post their comments and submit their own information for other readers to consider.
Blogs are a form of interactive Web site with content written and published or provided by the individual blogger. Often, blogs are in the style of an unstructured narrative that might be organized by date or topic, yet can often cover rambling and wide-ranging topics, as reflected by the blogger's personal tastes. Still, blog information can be useful, such as where a blogger chronicles travels in a region of particular interest. Regular readers may be able to follow the bloggers travels, but other readers must use search engines or features to mine travel information from the blog. Found information, though, may not be of the type or caliber sought, making the search effort of little help.
While travel-themed blogs sometimes offer valuable insights, online travel information databases are usually more informative and in a better structured and consistent form. These databases are generally well-indexed and searchable, but esoteric and niche information can be rare. To meet the needs of a broader audience, the sharing of personalized travel information is either unsupported or discouraged. Furthermore, locations of arcane or limited interest, such as Elvis tribute museums, may be unavailable, as these types of locations seldom attract enough interest to warrant space, except for a few aficionados.
Moreover, online travel information databases, when organized by geolocational data, such as available via GPS, are generally structured to provide an identity to a set of raw geolocational coordinates. Restaurants, for instance, are stored in the database by geolocation, and are not usually indexed by personal taste, niche appeal, or similar criteria. As well, the geolocational data is frequently indexed under pre-defined categories or key words without provision for adding new information, personalization, or collaborative sharing via a blog.
Geolocational data may also be viewed directly online using Web-based two-dimensional maps and three-dimensional Earth browsers, also known as “geobrowsers,” such as Google Earth, licensed by Google Inc., Mountain View, Calif. Geospatial language scripts, such as the Keyhold Markup Language, allow Web pages to include geographic annotations and visualizations for locations that are specified through geolocational data. However, the geobrowsers only display maps and visualizations and any personalizations manually added by a user without provisions for interactive sharing of personalized travel information.